FCC Leaning Toward a 1 t0 5 dB boost for digital FM stations..not 10dB.

[DaveBayArea]

I'm thinking that things in San Fran weren't all that great for you even before he turned on his HD. That's really not your market.

Oh - they weren't. No argument there. But we did have listeners and subscribers. In fact we used to have them as far away as Napa. Where it really hurt us was in Alameda County - Union City, Hayward, & Castro Valley. Plus the more affluent areas of Saratoga & Los Altos Hills. Some of that area is actually inside our protected contour, but it's line-of-sight to KALW and blocked from our transmitter by Montebello Ridge. We have a booster that used to blanket that area nicely, but its signal is pretty much covered with digital noise towards Saratoga & the South end of Cupertino these days. The hard part is that I really want digital radio to succeed. KKUP might even consider it if we weren't at such a compromised power level. I just think it needs a new radio band, with allocations that are catered to modern receivers and real terrain conditions. Yeah, that's a pipe dream. I know. But it's hard knowing that we're losing way more audience than KALW is gaining with HD.

Dave B.

 

[greg.hahn]

Are you aware of the first-adjacent short-spacings in the commercial FM band that exist in some of the largest markets? Starting in Boston and working south to Washington, you can find dozens, and many of these stations operate without directional antennas or reduced power to provide contour protection.

For example, check out the distance between New York's Empire State Building and Philadelphia's Roxborough antenna farm and compare this against the 73.207 separation for B to B first adjacent. Or take a look at the situation between Baltimore and Washington, or the Chicago area, or southern California (where a lot of stations aren't only short-spaced, but operate above the Class B power limit). It's not just the non-comm reserved band where you will find spacing problems.

The big question in this proceeding is how to resolve new interference problems when they occur. If a 10 dB across-the-board increase is approved, they will.

I wasn't aware of that, and that really sucks. The New York- Philly situation is really bad. It's difficult to have a rational plan when the FCC has stupidly broken it's own rules all over the country. And Dave B's situation sucks as well.

That being said, all the other gripes about HD stations having poor time alignment or playing MP3s is just BS because those are all engineering issues that can be fixed the same ways we've always fixed things- spend some money and some effort.

 

[Play Freebird]

I wasn't aware of that, and that really sucks. The New York- Philly situation is really bad. It's difficult to have a rational plan when the FCC has stupidly broken it's own rules all over the country. And Dave B's situation sucks as well.

That being said, all the other gripes about HD stations having poor time alignment or playing MP3s is just BS because those are all engineering issues that can be fixed the same ways we've always fixed things- spend some money and some effort.

Although it may appear that the FCC broke its own rules, what really happened was that the rules were changed. In the Northeast Corridor, the power limit for Class B stations was originally 20 kW at 500 feet. Prior to 1962, the distance separation requirements didn't apply, so commercial FM applicants only needed to show contour protection (NCE-FM applications are still handled this way) and that's how the short spacings came to be. Class B stations said they needed a power increase to do an adequate job of covering their markets and to boost receiver sales (sound familiar?) and were granted an increase of 4 dB (to 50 kW), even though this would result in limited contour overlap.

Later (around the '70s), the FCC began allowing mutual power increase agreements which created even more overlap. The general attitude between applicants was, "I don't care that you don't protect me if I don't have to protect you." This explains how WCBS-FM in New York and WBEB in Philadelphia are allowed to operate on the same channel with no contour protection. Then in the '80s, after Docket 80-90 was approved, the rules were tightened up and it is no longer as easy to make these agreements -- unless you have the right connnections in Washington. I was involved in a case where a locally-owned Class B station wanted to move to a much better "tower farm" site which violated the spacing rules by 2 miles. However, the service contour of the short-spaced first adjacent station would have been protected by use of a directional antenna. (In fact, if the station had been Class C2 with the SAME power, height, and pattern, there wouldn't have been ANY legal problem.) After a six year attempt at making this move, the FCC refused to grant the necessary waiver, so the local owner gave up and sold out to a large group -- and the FCC reversed it decision less than a year later. It's all about politics.


Your point about time alignment, MP3s, etc is valid, but I would say the real problem rests not with local engineers but with the corporate executives (and the investment banks that control them) who insist on cutting operating budgets and laying off staff.

If the local engineer (who is already working 80 hours/week because assistants were eliminated) must choose between maintaining unreliable HD equipment or fixing the sales manager's computer, what should be the higher priority?

 

[Eng.Mike]

3- False. have you ever tuned a station on an HD receiver? because if you have, you know you get it in analog instantly

greg.hahn you are absolutely right. It's been a couple of years but it was my Sirius radio that did that and not the HD receiver. Not to confuse. I tried both at about the same time and the Sirius went back after two weeks because I don't like the sound. The HD converter got put on the shelf. So this weekend I hooked it up again (I should have done that before my long post). My main concerns are about adjacent channel interference and sound quality. I live 32 miles south of the Empire State bldg.; right at the south boarder of the "local" coverage contour of the big Manhattan FMs (according to Radio-locator.com). At home, with a directional antenna at about 20 MSL, I could get most of the IBOC signals to lock. WPLJ would toggle back and forth making it completely annoying. At my office, my receive antenna is at over 125 MSL but I am 37 miles from Empire. Now at the office many more IBOC stations lock but the radio doesn't even try to lock WPLJ. I venture that this is because I'm now closer to the second adjacent. And it was the second adjacent problem that drew me into this discussion in the first place. Now I think you already know how I feel about the sound quality. That is why I put the HD Radio converter away. Most stations sound better without the IBOC locked.

The increased occupied bandwidth of IBOC and the already short short-spacing of FM's don't work out.
Many probably can't relate to this where they live but stations are loosing coverage because of IBOC.

 

[BobOnTheJob]

Many probably can't relate to this where they live but stations are loosing coverage because of IBOC.

Indeed they are...and not just short spaced stations. WORX 96.7/Madison,IN was very listenable on I-275 in northern KY (for some background & why this matters...many Madison residents work in the greater Cincinnati market, including the I-275 beltway). That signal is now 100% pure hiss thanks to the IBOC from 96.5. At that point, both stations are about 37 miles from the receiver. The results are two fold....the first being that the hometown folks who used to be able to enjoy their hometown station to work & back now can not. The second being that EVERY one of the listeners who make that trek are left with the impression that WORX "isn't as strong as it once was"...an image no one wants. Granted, this is outside of the proverbial 'protected contour', but still, we have a technology that has driven away listeners in the process of attempting to gain listeners. And that makes it a "bad neighbor" in my book. But this isn't confined to the 37 mile area where the signal now no longer arrives. At 25 miles, the stereo signal to noise ratio is in the area of 15db. And this is a fully spaced, non-grandfathered scenario. This is simply inexcusable.

 

[greg.hahn]

3- False. have you ever tuned a station on an HD receiver? because if you have, you know you get it in analog instantly

greg.hahn you are absolutely right. It's been a couple of years but it was my Sirius radio that did that and not the HD receiver. Not to confuse. I tried both at about the same time and the Sirius went back after two weeks because I don't like the sound. The HD converter got put on the shelf. So this weekend I hooked it up again (I should have done that before my long post). My main concerns are about adjacent channel interference and sound quality. I live 32 miles south of the Empire State bldg.; right at the south boarder of the "local" coverage contour of the big Manhattan FMs (according to Radio-locator.com). At home, with a directional antenna at about 20 MSL, I could get most of the IBOC signals to lock. WPLJ would toggle back and forth making it completely annoying. At my office, my receive antenna is at over 125 MSL but I am 37 miles from Empire. Now at the office many more IBOC stations lock but the radio doesn't even try to lock WPLJ. I venture that this is because I'm now closer to the second adjacent. And it was the second adjacent problem that drew me into this discussion in the first place. Now I think you already know how I feel about the sound quality. That is why I put the HD Radio converter away. Most stations sound better without the IBOC locked.

The increased occupied bandwidth of IBOC and the already short short-spacing of FM's don't work out.
Many probably can't relate to this where they live but stations are loosing coverage because of IBOC.

That's interesting about WPLJ and the Empire signals. Do you have strong adjacents on BOTH sides of WPLJ? Because IBOC only needs the data on one side of the carrier, not both. So I'd say if you don't have a strong 1st adjacent on both sides, that's not it.

 

[gtomas]

That being said, all the other gripes about HD stations having poor time alignment or playing MP3s is just BS because those are all engineering issues that can be fixed the same ways we've always fixed things- spend some money and some effort.

Greg, I fully agree with you and Eng.Mike on the need for radio stations to put the effort in, to use uncompressed audio sources and other production material and establish a no-compression rule in editing and transfer. I've been preaching that myself for quite a while.

However, not all issues can be fixed by the engineers as some issues are inherent part of the HD Radio system - namely the audio coding. If the digital channel in HD Radio was used only as a simulcast of analog with full 96 kbps bitrate, the audio quality of digital could be considered better than analog FM. How much better is debatable. If MPEG-4 AAC was used, I would say better. As iBuqity uses it's own HDC codec which seems to be inferior to AAC, I'm not sure how much improvement there actually is over analog FM. However, there are certainly improvements in the elimination of noise and interference as well as the pre-emphasis.

But as soon as the 96 bitrate is split to put in two or more channels, IMO the audio quality of any channel drops below the quality of analog FM. And there is nothing engineers can do about it...

There has been a long standing opinion among radio professionals that audio quality doesn't matter, content does. While I agree that content is the primary reason why people listen to radio, I also think the quality is why they keep listening. The radio stations have been driving the quality of their broadcasts down for some time now. I can't count the number of times I've heard - "we don't need to do that, people can't tell the difference anyway". In fact, HD Radio is based on the very premise that SBR enabled codec at 48 kbps is enough (some claim even 32 kbps is enough) to produce audio quality people are happy with. I believe the success of HD Radio or its failure will be the ultimate answer whether listeners care only about content and audio quality doesn't matter, or in fact it does matter (although your average listener can't consciously point it out).


Regards,
Goran Tomas

 

[Hillbillicus]

Has anyone seen a Return on Investment yet? I think that is the appropriate question here.

 

[Eng.Mike]

That's interesting about WPLJ and the Empire signals. Do you have strong adjacents on BOTH sides of WPLJ? Because IBOC only needs the data on one side of the carrier, not both. So I'd say if you don't have a strong 1st adjacent on both sides, that's not it./quote]

I did a band scan here about a year and a half ago using an Audemat FM-MC4 with a calibrated omni antenna on one of the station vans. It produced a nice chart of the whole band. It showed WPLJ on 95.5 at 39 dBuV. 95.9 was at 77dBuV and both 95.3 and 95.1 were at 22 dBuV. I have no idea what 95.3 could have been since there doesn't appear to be anything there. Maybe it was tropo.

 

[K4WRF]

Has anyone seen a Return on Investment yet? I think that is the appropriate question here.

Even if “Hybrid –Digital” had been a technological success right from the beginning, we would still be nowhere near the breakeven point. Now we are being told the capital investment will have to be made again? Is that investment going to turn the tide against competing mediums and ad revenues that continue to slide? Even at the time “Hybrid-Digital” was introduced, ad revenues were stagnant for the most part. With that in mind, then where was the revenue going to come from to provide the ROI?

And we wonder why the industry is on the rocks…..

 

[LA_Guy]

Let's get real...

Let's get real, guys-it's well past time to put this dog to sleep! HD has had over five years to make an impact-and it hasn't. The listeners don't want HD! It's a product without a customer.
Stations would be MUCH better served by turning off their HD signals and putting the resources into their analog signals. Radio is getting pounded into the ground by alternative media and it's WAY past time to reverse this trend! And as far as the secondaries go-does anyone even LISTEN to them? The only benefit at all is the FCC loophole that (presently) allows FM translators to broadcast secondaries. BUT how long do you expect that loophole to last (I sure don't!).

IBOC is a fatally flawed system that doesn't affect YOUR signal, but it KILLS your neighbors' ! Here in LA I was trying to listen to 97.1 the other day and found it was being jammed. It turns out that the skip was in-and a distant IBOC signal was trashing the local 97.1 right in Hollywood. It sounded really BAD and lasted over 2 hours. Now we want to increase this by as much as 10 db?!

It's time to stop this IBOC insanity! It had its chance and lost-now let's bury it and move on!

 

[Seattleradiodude]

Re: Let's get real...

Let's get real, guys-it's well past time to put this dog to sleep! HD has had over five years to make an impact-and it hasn't.

That Right!! Just like FM and FM Stereo Should never have taken off!! (Btw, they DID after about 20 years!)

The listeners don't want HD!

Really? YOU'VE personally interviewed ALL 270+ Million of them?!
Right, that’s kind of what I thought...


Please, Grow Up!
This is an engineering board. Not your Silly little "HD Bash" board.

No one is impressed with your wordplay, or your "DX experiences" E-Skip happens to FM and Skywave will happen to all AM, Stations will interfere with each other, it’s just the nature of the game (boy, bet the FCC would love it if that were the case though). So by your example, both of these are flawed technologies as well?
Please… Move on and accept change

Come back when you have data and intelligent theory as to the proposed 10db power increase. (Might be hard to gather that data from behind the counter of Burger King at closing time)

 

[LA_Guy]

Re: Let's get real...

Let's get real, guys-it's well past time to put this dog to sleep! HD has had over five years to make an impact-and it hasn't.

That Right!! Just like FM and FM Stereo Should never have taken off!! (Btw, they DID after about 20 years!)

Comments imbedded:

First off, FM and FM stereo happened under a completely different paradigm! Do you really think that RADIO will exist in anything close to its current form in 20 years? How about TV or the Internet? Quit being a Luddite stuck back in the last century. It's 2009 you know!

The listeners don't want HD!

Really? YOU'VE personally interviewed ALL 270+ Million of them?!

No...I haven't interviewed those people. And I don't have to! FIVE YEARS and WELL under a million receivers sold. The numbers speak for themselves! Even Radio Shack has given up on HD!


Right, that’s kind of what I thought...
Please, Grow Up!
This is an engineering board. Not your Silly little "HD Bash" board.
No one is impressed with your wordplay, or your "DX experiences" E-Skip happens to FM and Skywave will happen to all AM, Stations will interfere with each other, it’s just the nature of the game (boy, bet the FCC would love it if that were the case though). So by your example, both of these are flawed technologies as well?
Please… Move on and accept change

YOU are the one that won't accept change. Radio is DEAD! Except for sports, No one under 30 listens to it any more. Of course, I'm sure that you are the ONLY one out there that doesn't own an IPOD or computer..RIGHT? DX experiences? Can't you READ? I was unable to hear a Los Angeles licensed Mount Wilson Class B FM for over TWO HOURS on a Saturday afternoon! IBOC is the ONLY broadcast system the FCC has EVER authorized that interferes with other stations!!!

Come back when you have data and intelligent theory as to the proposed 10db power increase. (Might be hard to gather that data from behind the counter of Burger King at closing time)

I was a major market CE when you were learning to tie your shoes, dude! YOU are the Luddite here! Look it up!

 

[wgliradio]

We don't get calls when the HD is down, it's just a plaything.

As for FM stereo, it could afford 20 years for growth in popularity. HD radio cannot. Technology changes too quickly to keep up.

 

[BobOnTheJob]

We don't get calls when the HD is down, it's just a plaything.

For the record, a very expensive plaything that's not the kind of neighbor I'd want.

 

[radiorob2.0]

FM stereo, or AM stereo for that matter, didn't add the level of problems and cost of IBOC.

A few weeks ago I visited my parents in Lexington, KY and brought along my Sony HD radio (purchased on closeout for $35) to see what I could receive. I was anxious to hear WHAS' digital signal. My parents home is about 60 miles from the transmitter site so the signal is on par with the locals. I dialed up 840 and the "HD" light flashed and all of the signal bars were engaged but no digital. A couple of times it would go digital but would quickly revert to analog. What digital audio I did hear reminded me of 1997 RA 3.0. My dad commented that digital radio was another AM stereo. The difference is you could receive WHAS in AM stereo from this very same location twenty-five years earlier and sounded amazing.

IBOC is another "get rich quick scheme" of modern radio. The NAB and similar trade organizations became fixated on the sub channel revenue potentials. When asked about how they plan to subsidize these additional radio signals in today's competitive environment the answers is always, "The money is out there!". Of course these are the very same folks who thinks the kids today listen to their transistor radios as they do their homework before they go to the malt shop.

I've said it before and will again, in order for IBOC success two things must happen:

-There must be enough radios out there at a cost equal to or less than other portable media and just as widely available.

-There must be programming that creates demand thus encouraging the purchase of receivers.

Neither of these factors exist so for the time being the IBOC transmitter will keep the plant warm on a cold winter night.

 

[greg.hahn]

FM stereo, or AM stereo for that matter, didn't add the level of problems and cost of IBOC.

A few weeks ago I visited my parents in Lexington, KY and brought along my Sony HD radio (purchased on closeout for $35) to see what I could receive. I was anxious to hear WHAS' digital signal. My parents home is about 60 miles from the transmitter site so the signal is on par with the locals. I dialed up 840 and the "HD" light flashed and all of the signal bars were engaged but no digital. A couple of times it would go digital but would quickly revert to analog. What digital audio I did hear reminded me of 1997 RA 3.0. My dad commented that digital radio was another AM stereo. The difference is you could receive WHAS in AM stereo from this very same location twenty-five years earlier and sounded amazing.

Rob,

Did you happen to try WLW during your test? Because the HD coverage of WHAS sucks with a capital S. It cuts out in many places throughout Louisville, Jefferson, and Shelby Counties. (Their 50 KW tower is on the Jeff/Shelby county line)

By contrast, WLW is very solid from way down into Kentucky and up past Dayton. My point is that WHAS is a terrible example by which to judge HD radio. I don't think their HD has ever worked correctly.

 

[radiorob2.0]

FM stereo, or AM stereo for that matter, didn't add the level of problems and cost of IBOC.

A few weeks ago I visited my parents in Lexington, KY and brought along my Sony HD radio (purchased on closeout for $35) to see what I could receive. I was anxious to hear WHAS' digital signal. My parents home is about 60 miles from the transmitter site so the signal is on par with the locals. I dialed up 840 and the "HD" light flashed and all of the signal bars were engaged but no digital. A couple of times it would go digital but would quickly revert to analog. What digital audio I did hear reminded me of 1997 RA 3.0. My dad commented that digital radio was another AM stereo. The difference is you could receive WHAS in AM stereo from this very same location twenty-five years earlier and sounded amazing.

Rob,

Did you happen to try WLW during your test? Because the HD coverage of WHAS sucks with a capital S. It cuts out in many places throughout Louisville, Jefferson, and Shelby Counties. (Their 50 KW tower is on the Jeff/Shelby county line)

By contrast, WLW is very solid from way down into Kentucky and up past Dayton. My point is that WHAS is a terrible example by which to judge HD radio. I don't think their HD has ever worked correctly.

WLW made the "HD" light flash but no digital. WLW signal in Lexington doesn't have the punch of WHAS. I did notice the "HD" light flashed on 790 though. The amusing part of my IBOC test was the text on a sub channel. I believe it was WKQQ's subchannel that had dead air and the text reading something to the effect of "GodD*mn MotherF*cker", I wish I had a camera handy.

 

[RolfTaylor]

<SNIP>
However, not all issues can be fixed by the engineers as some issues are inherent part of the HD Radio system - namely the audio coding. If the digital channel in HD Radio was used only as a simulcast of analog with full 96 kbps bitrate, the audio quality of digital could be considered better than analog FM. How much better is debatable. If MPEG-4 AAC was used, I would say better. As iBuqity uses it's own HDC codec which seems to be inferior to AAC, I'm not sure how much improvement there actually is over analog FM. However, there are certainly improvements in the elimination of noise and interference as well as the pre-emphasis.
<SNIP>
Regards,
Goran Tomas

Goran,

You are misinformed. HDC is based on AAC+ Yes, the SBR portion is not perfect (seems to be much more detectable to some individual vs other) and it does not support the newer methods of AAC-HE for stereo encoding (the same tool used for 5.1 broadcast but extended to stereo).

Rolf Taylor
Applications/Support Engineer
Audemat-APT

 

[gtomas]

You are misinformed. HDC is based on AAC+ Yes, the SBR portion is not perfect (seems to be much more detectable to some individual vs other) and it does not support the newer methods of AAC-HE for stereo encoding (the same tool used for 5.1 broadcast but extended to stereo).

From the very obscure information from iBiquity, I understand that the HDC is a proprietary codec that uses SBR. Coding Technologies is quite specific that iBiquity uses their SBR, so I don't think iBiquity would use (or that Coding Technologies would allow them to) any inferior version of SBR than the original one from Coding Technologies (which is the same as in HE-AAC v1, aka AAC+).

That leaves the core codec to be different. If the core codec was indeed AAC, then the codec would be HE-AAC. As it is not, it's called HDC. An additional argument is that the codec was called HDC even before they added the SBR. If you remember, that was when they did some listening test and testers found the audio quality to be poor. I understand HDC is based on MPEG-4, but it is not the same nor compatible.

Btw, I would LOVE to get all the specifics on HDC. But no one's talking. Back when I was doing research for an article, I tried to get information from iBiquity but I got no response from them what-so-ever...


Regards,
Goran Tomas